Chapter Thirteen

Hermione swallowed visibly, increasing the guilt tugging at Severus’ heart. He ran his thumb back and forth across her knuckles, offering as much comfort as his brave girl was willing to accept while she processed everything he’d told her—while she processed the betrayal by the woman she’d turned to when her own mother had distanced herself. A woman who’d fooled even him… for a time.

The Floo flared, interrupting the nightly private recital of his favorite classical piano works. “Severus!”

Before Severus could ask what the devil the woman was babbling about, the Floo’s suction squeezed the breath from his lungs.

“Why?” Hermione’s voice trembled with the tears refusing to relinquish their hold on her lashes. “Why would she do something like that? She was so understanding when things ended between Ron and me.” His darling girl drew a shaky breath and inched her gaze toward his. “She was the first to acknowledge that a Snape-Granger match wasn’t such a…” The first tears fell, splashing down her cheeks like the raindrops that herald a coming deluge.

Severus abandoned his wife’s hands and pulled her into his arms. Her shuddering sobs invaded his very core, wringing tears from his soul. Ignoring the moisture on his own cheeks, he held her close, letting the familiarity of her scent soothe his guilt. She had to know. She had to know everything in case Molly Weasley did attempt to lay claim to their little rosebud. She needed to be prepared, to be wary. They all did.

“Why, Severus?” she whispered against his chest. “Why?”

He’d asked that very same question over and over again as Albus tried to explain the reason Molly Weasley was giving her youngest son a potion even the Dark Lord would never consider administering.

“It’s quite simple, my boy.” Few would notice the slight dimming of the twinkle in the old wizard’s eyes, but Severus knew it carried far more information than the words falling from the headmaster’s lips. “The Affectus Stabilitas Potion is the only thing that will calm the young man’s emotional distress.”

For the first time tonight, Severus looked at the man who held his other set of puppet strings. And what he saw—the naked concern wrinkling the old wizard’s face—chilled him to his very marrow. He could see the fight going out of the headmaster with a single exchange of air. “The part the Weasley family, Ron in particular, will play in young Harry’s quest to vanquish Voldemort, is paramount to his success.” Albus lifted his watery blue eyes to meet Severus’ gaze. “And to your safety.” A sad smile tugged at the wizard’s lips. “I refuse to let Molly’s affliction—re-manifested in her youngest son—or your damnable sense of justice stand in the way of that."

He tightened his hold on his wife. “I wish the answer was simple, my darling girl,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the curls atop her head. “But like most things in this world of ours, it isn’t.”

Hermione lifted her head and peered at him with the same scrutiny she gave to most of the puzzles in her life. “There’s an answer to this madness?” She pulled away slightly, her red-rimmed eyes searching his face. “There’s a reason Molly Weasley would place a tracking spell on me during MY birthday party, then use it to inform Ron of my whereabouts the night of the Halloween Ball.” She sat even straighter, her cheeks tinted with the same outrage flashing in those amber depths. “There is a reason she stayed silent while you, fresh from your hospital bed, and Harry and Minerva and Neville and all the rest of MY friends searched frantically for me.” She crossed her arms and glowered at him with such intensity, he cringed. “There is a reason.” The prove-me-wrong tilt to her head completed the picture of controlled rage. “Really?”

“Indeed,” Severus managed. She was quite the fearsome lioness when she was riled. Terrifyingly so, at times.

“And what, beloved,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “is that reason?”

“You expect me to keep this secret?” Severus was incensed. While he’d never admit to the magnetic pull he felt from the know-it-all known as Hermione Granger, he wouldn’t stand idly by and allow harm to come to her. He needed to protect her from the boy. Needed to keep them apart. Needed to prune the love beginning to blossom between those two before it became the mother and son’s next twisted obsession. “Even if it costs a life?”

“However,” Albus conceded. “Should there come a time when circumstances necessitate the sharing of this information, the vow will lift enough for you to utter the word.”

Severus prayed this was the circumstance the headmaster foresaw all those years ago. Taking his bride’s hands again, he drew a breath and closed his eyes. “Molly Weasley and her youngest son are changelings, Hermione. At times, they simply cannot help themselves.”